Child Nutrition and Cooking - Why Home Cooking Matters

A decrease in physical activity is a major contributor to the childhood obesity epidemic.

Research suggests that eating habits begin early in childhood - before the second year of life - and taste preferences begin to be established even earlier. For this reason, the choices that we make when we begin to feed our children their first solid foods, are critically important to their later acceptance of a wide variety of healthy foods. But don’t despair if you feel you “missed the window of opportunity” when they were young. It’s never too late to start introducing new flavors to a child - with plenty of love and patience.

Approximately one third of U.S. children between 4-19 years of age eats fast food every day, resulting in an estimated extra six pounds of added body weight per child per year.

Great ways to facilitate nutritious food choices. Remember to tell your children they have a choice, and they can use it wisely to be healthy and happy!

• Taking children to a farmer’s market
• Limiting exposure to screen-based ads for processed foods
• Planting something with your children that you can then eat later on

Studies that follow children over long periods of time have consistently found that the more TV children watch, the more likely they are to gain excess weight. This is related both to the sedentary behavior of TV watching, and the many advertisements for junk food that children see on TV each year. There is also evidence that increased screen time from video games and computer use is linked to obesity as well. Try to set a goal as a family -- what is the maximum amount of time you and your children will spend in front of screens each day?

Examples of food playing a social function:

• A family sits together at dinnertime and the children share, with their parents, the joys and frustrations they have been experiencing at school.
• Each year, Annie’s friends fly across the country to celebrate her birthday at her favorite restaurant.
• Well done! Not quite - while it is true that Joe would have less energy to socialize, this scenario is primarily an example of food playing a nutritional role. Joe’s body needs energy from food to perform all sorts of biological tasks.
• Guests at a business conference mingle and discuss their work over a meal.

Obesity affects almost every organ system in the developing child. Type 2 Diabetes is especially concerning as the complications associated with this disease (loss of vision, amputations, kidney failure and heart disease) depend on the length of time a body is exposed to elevated levels of blood sugar (the main problem in this disorder). This means that children who develop Type 2 Diabetes are more likely to face these terrible consequences at a time in their lives when they should be enjoying a healthy adulthood.